And make the bristling boar to crouch and fall, MDLXXXIX. Plutarch. If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with the comment of the various deaths of men, and it could not but be useful, for who should teach men to die, would at the same time teach them to live.-Montaigne MDXC. The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happiness.-Goldsmith. MDXCI. The general principles of urbanity, politeness, or civility, have been the same in all nations; but the mode in which they are dressed is continually varying. The general idea of showing respect is by making yourself less; but the manner, whether by bowing the body kneeling, prostration, pulling off the upper part of our dress, or taking away the lower, is a matter of custom.-Sir J. Reynolds. MDXCII. Cato was wont to say of young persons, that he had a greater opinion of such as were subject to colour, than those that looked pale; teaching us thereby to look with greater apprehensions on the heinousness of an action, than the reprimand which might happily follow; and to be more afraid of the suspicion of doing an ill thing, than the danger of it.-Plutarch. MDXCIII. Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.-Burke. Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.-Exodus, c. iii. v. 5. MDXCIV. Gold, though the most solid and heavy of metalls, yet may be beaten out so thin, as to be lightest and slightest of all things. Thus nobility, though in itself most honourable, may be so attenuated through the smalnesse of means, as thereby to grow neglected; which makes our nobleman to practise Solomon's precept-" Be diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thine herds; for the crown doth not endure to every generation." If not the crown, much lesse the coronet; and good husbandry may as well stand with great honour, as breadth may consist with height.-Fuller. MDXCV. A pretender to learning is one that would make all others more fools than himself, for though he know nothing, he would not have the world know so much. He conceits nothing in learning but the opinion, which he seeks to purchase without it, though he might with less labour cure his ignorance than hide it. He is indeed a kind of scholar-mountebank, and his art our delusion. He is tricked out in all the accoutrements of learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. He is oftener in his study than at his book, and you cannot pleasure him better than to deprehend him: yet he hears you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry as interrupted. You find him in his slippers and a pen in his ear, in which formality he was asleep. His table is spread wide with some classic folio, which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath laid open in the same page this half year. His candle is always a longer sitter up than himself, and the boast of his window at midnight. He walks much alone in the posture of meditation, and has a book still before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldom without a Greek testament or Hebrew bible, which he opens only in the church, and that when some stander-by looks over. He has sentences for company, some scatterings of Seneca and Tacitus, which are good upon all occasions. If he reads any thing in the morning, it comes up all at dinner; and as long as that lasts, the discourse is his. He is a great plagiary of tavern wit, and comes to sermons only that he may talk of Austin. His parcels are the meer scrapings from company, yet he complains at parting what time he has lost. He is wondrously capricious to seem a judgment, and listens with a sower attention to what he understands not. He talks much of Scaliger, and Casaubon, and the Jesuits, and prefers some unheard-of Dutch name before them all. He has verses to bring in upor these and these hints, and it shall go hard but he will wind in his opportunity. He is critical in a language he cannot conster, and speaks seldom under Arminius in divinity. His business and retirement and caller away is his study, and he protests no delight to it comparable. He is a great nomenclator of authors, which he has read in general in the catalogue, and in particular in the title, and goes seldom so far as the dedication. He never talks of any thing but learning, and learns all from talking. Three encounters with the same men pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says nothing. He has taken pains to be an ass, though not to be a scholar and is at length discovered and laughed at.-Bishop Earle. MCXCVI. When you set about composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limb, will yield the better for having a rag about him besides that I have observed a gardener cut the outward rine of a tree, (which is the surtout of it,) to make it bear well: and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument, why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad. I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth.-Swift's Advice to a young Poet. MDXCVII. Justice painted blind, Infers his ministers are obliged to hear The cause, and truth; the judge, determine of it; By a false gloss, or corrected comment, alter MDXCVIII. Massinger. Story-telling is not an art, but what we call a "knack;" it dotn not so much subsist upon wit, as upon humour; and I will add that it is not perfect without proper gesticulations of the body, which naturally attend such merry emotions of the mind. I know very well that a certain gravity of countenance sets some stories off to advantage, where the hearer is to be surprised in the end; but this is by no means a general rule; for it is frequently convenient to aid and assist by cheerful looks and whimsical gesticulations. I will yet go further, and affirm that the success of a story very often depends upon the make of the body, and the formation of the features of him who relates it.-Swift. MDXCIX. When a man wants or comes short of an entire and accomplished virtue, our defects may be supplied by forgiveness, since the forgiving of evil deeds in others amounteth to no less than virtue in us; and therefore, it may be not unaptly called the paying our debts with another man's money -Lord Herbert. MDC. Nothing is so pregnant as cruelty; so multifarious, so rapid, so ever-teeming a mother, is unknown to the animal kingdom; each of her experiments provokes another and refines upon the last; though always progressive, yet always remote from the end.-Lavater. MDCI. Too much or too little wit Do only render th' owners fit MDCII. Butler. The first minister of state has not so much business in public, as a wise man has in private: if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be in company; the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and nature under his consideration.-Cowley. MDCIII. It is no very uncommon thing in the world to meet with men of probity; there are likewise a great many men of honour to be found. Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters, are frequent: but a true fine gentleman is what one seldom sees. He is properly a compound of the various good qualities that embellish mankind. As the great poet animates all the different parts of learning by the force of his genius, and irradiates all the compass of his knowledge by the lustre and brightness of his imagination; so all the great and solid perfections of life appear in the finished gentleman, with a beautiful gloss and varnish; every thing he says or does is accompanied with a manner, or rather a charm, that draws the admiration and goodwill of every beholder.—Steele. (Gold.) MDCIV. Here's musick In this bag shall wake her, though she had drank opium, Or eaten mandrakes. Let commanders talk Of cannons to make breaches; give but fire To this petard, it shall blow open, madam, The iron doors of a judge, and make you entrance; |